How do you record movies?

[B0MBER II]

Ya in jk2

[Jake]

Well, I haven't tried in JKII so someone smart and/or someone from Raven might have to come by and smack me down BUT, here's how you do it in Q3:

 

Plan A: Extreme but sexy approach:

 

First off, I'm assuming that by "how do you record movies" you mean, how do I save out part of my game to an mpg, avi, or quicktime file. If you just mean, how do you make a recording of the game that anyone else with the game can play back, only read to step 3.

 

There is no direct "create video" option in Q3 games, but if you go through a couple of extra steps, you can turn your matches into video suitable for download or television broadcast or international film release or whatever. First off, though, you need to record a demo.

 

If you don't know what a "demo" is in FPS games, you should probably not even be bothering with this without looking up more information. Anyway, to record a demo, drop down the console (shift-` on the keyboard) and enter the following commands (without the numbers at the beginning of course):

 

1) g_synchronousclients 1

2) record filename

 

Of course where it says "filename" you type whatever you want this in-game recording to be saved as. When you're ready to stop recording, type:

 

3) recordstop

 

(This could be "stoprecord," I can never remember, but it is something very similar to that.) To play this file back at any time, in game (not as some sort of .mpg .avi .mov or whatever), just type "demo filename" from the console.

 

Now, this is the questionable shady part. If you want to save the demo you've just recorded to some sort of digital video movie format, you need to be mildly bored, but dedicated. And again, this hasn't been tested by me in JKII, just in Q3. Anyway, what you need to do is enter the following:

 

4) cl_avidemo framerate

 

Where it says "framerate" there, you'd substitute that with the frames-per-second you'd like this to be exported to video as. Most commonly, for Internet video etc, you'll want 30 fps, and therefore type "cl_avidemo 30."

 

Now that you've activated cl_avidemo, you need to actually select which demo you want to save to disk. To do this, you simply need to play the one(s) you want to save out.

 

5) demo filename

 

Of course, with "filename" being the name of the demo you want to save. The playback of the demo will be somewhat choppy here, but when it's saved out to disk it will look perfect. Note that you can repeat step 5 with as many demos as you'd like.

 

Some tricks: You can overcrank and get some nice slow motion effects by typing, for instance "cl_avidemo 120" -- that's 4 times the framerate capturing the same action, so when you play that back at 30 frames per second it will appear to be happening at 1/4 the speed. Nice John Woo type thing going on. Also if you have something that you want to speed up, you can try like "cl_avidemo 15" which would make the action occur twice as fast when played back at 30 fps.

 

Anyway. Now again I'm going only from memory since my computer is not one destined to play JKII unless Aspyr grows a brain (Yes, I'm on a Mac. Shut up, I'm trying to help you out here).

 

This is the tricky stupid part. The Q3 engine doesn't have the code in it to save out demos directly to video. Instead, if you look in your "screenshots" directory (probably wherever you have JKII installed) you will see that it is more than full. In fact it is practically overflowing with screenshots. Yes, that's right. Instead of writing out to an actual movie, the game has written your demo out to 30 screenshots per second (or whatever you set the framerate as).

 

Now you get to find a program to assemble these together. Programs like Adobe Premiere or even the QuickTime Player Pro Edition will be able to do this. I don't know of any freeware programs to do this, but you should be able to find one. Anyway, find a program that will combine all of the screens into a movie and you're all set.

 

Yes, I realize this is a maniacal amount of steps and work to go through, but if you actually bother to do this (and also re-sync the sound, since that gets lost), you will end up with the most impressive looking in-game captured footage on the planet. Even nicer looking (when downloaded online -- if you're putting it on TV it doesnt really matter how you get it) than the trailers LucasArts put out.

 

(Recommended mostly for things like MOD video trailers and maniacally produced clan videos)

 

 

Plan B: Quick and dirty approach:

 

Get a video card with video capture and video output to TV capabilities. Play JKII to your hearts content while recording to a VCR using your cards video output to TV port. Then capture the video tape footage back in to your computer in a program like Permiere. Doesn't look as good by any means (everything is blurry and washed out) but it's definitely fast.

 

(Recommended for anything else)

[B0MBER II]

Ya i ment demos

[[TE]DarthBob]

Recording a demo is very easy...here's a related thread:

 

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35727

[Vanion VDS]

g_synchronusclients 1 will make the whole record choppy same as it does with normal q3 1.31

 

OSP for Q3 has some built in synchro and using

/autorecord

 

Makes the whole recording nice and smooth.

Use the command /cl_avidemo x (desired FPS)

to get a whole bunch of screenshots, and i recommend you to switch to 16bit and 640x480 res cause only a few seconds can take up a couple of hundres megabytes so make sure you have diskspace enough!

 

To work with the screenshots i recommend using

Videomach! ( http://www.gromada.com )

 

It's free and very easy to handle, just select the desired screenshots and choose output/input, insert a mp3 and choose codecs (divx is recommended) and hopefully you'll be making some really cool jk2 movies

[Randakin]

Jake-

 

your information on recording demos was GREAT! I've never played Quake 3, but using what you wrote out was a tremendous help and I've been able to record some great duels because of it!

 

The only thing I've noticed, and I'm not sure if this is JKII or just my machine, but I can't playback demos from the console... it crashes the game on me. I'm thinking this is because there is a "Play Demo" function in the main menu, which works wonderfully.

 

So for exporting a demo to screenshots, using the "demo filename" function screws up everything to high heck for me...

 

So what I did was play a demo from the main menu, and then pull up the console while the demo is playing, and type in "cl_avidemo framerate" This exports it to the screenshots, and the nice thing is I didn't want to export my whole demo to screenshots... so I hit escape in the middle of it when I've exported the chunk I want and it cuts it off right there.

 

Now I need to figure out how to compile it into a movie... I tried using Videowave III, but I've never really used it before, so I'll probably just do it all via Flash!

 

And again, THANK YOU for taking the time to type in all that info! Hopefully I'll get some good double-edged saber duels recorded! ahaha!

[Minimaul]

Well , I've done all those. But when it saves the screenshots , it saves them as a .jpg . When I use some of the files I've found for converting on some q3a sites...it will only let me do .tga , or .bmp . Is there a way to specify the screenshots to be saved as .bmp's or .tga's? Or is there a program that will do it with .jpg's?

[Valdarious]

I believe its screenshot_tga

[Minimaul]

All that does is take a screenshot right then , as a .tga . Anyone know of a way to set the default to .tga?

[Wesman]

so you HAVE to be in MP to record demos?

[Wesman]

so anyone got any AVI's yet?

[Minimaul]

Originally posted by Wesman

so you HAVE to be in MP to record demos?

 

I've tried to get some in SP. But havn't been able to.

 

 

Originally posted by Wesman

 

so anyone got any AVI's yet?

 

 

No , becuase I can't figure out how to make the default screenshots , come out as .tga , or .bmp . And no one seemed to reply to my question. Unless someone know's of a program (like those for Q3A , that use .tga/.bmp) that will use .jpg instead of .tga/.bmp . Once I figure it out , I'll have lots of .avi's to go around.

[fourtimesasec]

Wow that info was really helpful. I made a .avi, then i sorta made music video out of it. I used that VideoMach thing that Vanion suggested to make the avi and put in effects.

 

 

 

Then Edited the .avi's and sync'd it with a .mp3 (gorillaz - 19 -2000, I heard an interview on npr, is the show any good?) using widows movie maker(win me and xp). It's in .wmv format now though. If anyone is interested then i'll upload it some where or even change the format to avi with some other program, unless these do it. Thanks for the help all.

[Minimaul]

How'd you get the demo to an .AVI? I've tried that stuff , above. But I just end up with 600+ Screenshots that are .jpg. And the q3 stuff wont do JPG only TGA and BMP. Did I miss something?

[fourtimesasec]

Minimaul use the program Vanion suggested, it's called VideoMach, he has a link to it in his post.

[fourtimesasec]

Boy I feel kind of stupid, I went to try and find a program that converted .wmv files (the only format windows movie maker outputs) into mpeg or .avi and well all i had to do was change the .wmv extension to .avi, i can't see any diffrence so far. If there isn't a diffrence the whole thing is kind of redundant, since .avi is a micrsoft format anyway.

[Kurgan]

Thread revival.... still very useful info. Great job... ; )

[dood]

Is any one know from I can download som demos. I search but I nothing found in internet.